Is power bi embedded the right reporting package to be used Angular 2 and above

Question

Our company are developing programs for the aquaculture industry, and have chosen Power BI Service as a platform for self service reporting. But we are also developing web applications where we need more simpler reporting which is controlled by the web application itself. We are using Angular as programming tool here, and we are wondering about if Power BI Embedded can be the right tool for us. I hope some of you have thoughts of using power bi embedded or even better tools. if you can give me your advise, the pros and cons, I would be grateful. Here are some questions to be asked:

a) In a web app using power bi embedded the end users will not need a Power BI license, right?

b) Another question is the cost. There may be about from hundreds to a thousand of users using the system. Will use of capasity solve this issue or what will be the cost per user per month, let us say 500 users?

c) Is power bi embedded suitable the best choice? I guess many of the report are standard reports with different data series that will be the foundation of the report. I believe that the business problem will decide what kind of report that will be needed. Perhaps other reporting packages will be better in our case where it is much simpler reporting inside the web app. Power BI embedded is using iframe tag to show reports, tiles, etc. is this a good way of controlling the report?

d) If we go for power bi embedded is it possible to turn off the interactivity of the power bi report using some property settings? Unexperience users can be lost if the interactivity takes wrong directions.

I am looking forward to hear any response from you and hopefully some of you had the same challenges chosing a reporting tool like we have. I mist admit, I have some doubt choosing power bi embedded as our reporting tool in our web app, but we are very satisfied using power bi in the service portal

Regards Geir

Answer 1

I've worked with PBI in a big company and faced a similar situation as you. My considerations are:

a) No, they do not need a license, but you'll pay for the server which will be more expensive according to how powerful you need it to be.

b) The servers vary from 1 to 32 dollars per hour depending on the amount of requests to report views. I assume for 500 users you would need the second or third server. Check more here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/power-bi-embedded/ (There's a pdf doc inside which has examples of pricing)

C) I personally don't think it is in the situation you described. Power Bi is an awesome tool for data visualization but it really sparks when you're working as a team of data analysts, data science, statistics or inside a department that has to continually create and analyze data. It's a tool for visualizing data quickly and retrieving information. If you're able to settle the reports and graphs you're going to need and don't need to constantly create new ones, then you're able to create a better experience for your user with other graphing and reporting libraries like Chart js and many other and at the same time you would save your company some money in the long run.

d) As for this moment I don't think so. There's a feature request open on Microsoft Forums and you can track it here: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/34285222-disable-visual-highlighting-and-interactions

Hope that this info helps.